


Moments

by circusfreak_88



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/F, Swan-Mills Family
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-23
Updated: 2016-12-28
Packaged: 2018-09-11 09:21:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8973961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/circusfreak_88/pseuds/circusfreak_88
Summary: Everyone is happy that Emma decided to stay in Storybrooke. Except Emma.
This is a slow burn SwanQween.





	1. Autumn

**Author's Note:**

> “You would do that for me?”
> 
> “I am very grateful for you choosing to stay here. For allowing me access to Henry.” She paused as she passed the freshened drink. “Besides,” Emma watched as Regina sipped from her drink, “I’m nice now.” The older woman smirked at her.

**August**

 

She ambled down the stairs to find Mary Margaret starting dinner and her son slouched on the sofa, phone in hand. Given the angle he was holding in, she could tell he was playing the same game he’d been on when she left him to try and work upstairs. It was nice to know that he had achieved as little with his day as she had with hers. Fruitlessness all round.

 

She threw herself down besides him and leant across him to grab the remote.

 

“I was watching that.” he complained as she flicked through the channels.

 

“Yeah?” She questioned but no more looking away from her screen as he did from his. “Now I’m watching it.” She thought heard Mary Margaret huff from the kitchen but chose to ignore it as she continued to hop through the channels.

 

After finding nothing to watch Emma put the channel to what it had been on and returned the remote to her son. Stupidly, she looked up and found her mother watching her.

 

“What?” She asked her.

 

“Why don’t you help me with dinner?” Emma found her eyes rolling, but got up nonetheless. After washing her hands she looked to her mother waiting further instruction. “If you could start chopping the carrots?”

 

“Carrots?”

 

“What’s wrong with carrots?”

 

“I don't like carrots.”

 

“You always used to eat carrots. I used to put them in the stews-“

 

“Yeah, when you made too much on purpose and claimed that you just happened to have left overs.” Emma nodded, looking in the fridge hoping another vegetable would materialise. “I remember. Of course you’d be a mother for a roommate.” She chided as pushed the door shut and started rummaging through the freezer. “And of course you don’t have any frozen vegetables.”

 

As she stood up she found Mary Margaret uncomfortably close to her. A feeling of discomfort only increased by the fact she was she holding a knife. Emma gingerly took it from her and placed it back on the island next to the chicken.

 

“What is your problem this evening?”

 

“There is no problem. I just don't like carrots.” Emma said stepping out of the confined space and settling herself on one of the bar stools. “Ask the kid.”

 

“ _Only oranges should be orange_.” He parroted back a clearly overheard line. 

 

Emma looked over to him unmoved from the sofa, eyes still fixed on his phone. She wondered how much he absorbed while he was silent in their presence. How much he heard and retained while they assumed he was absorbed in his games. How much he knew. 

 

She gestured back to him as if he had made her point and that the discussion was settled.

 

“You’re having them tonight.” Mary Margaret ignored, passing over the chopping board, carrots and a clean knife. “If this is you now I dread to think what Neal is going to be like as a teenager.” She complained.

 

Emma bristled in her seat and was about to open her mouth to voice her complaints but for her son throwing his phone across the sofa switched her attention. 

 

“Speaking of.” she sighed. “You break it and the replacement will be a brick.” She called over to him as she topped and tailed the first of the carrots.

 

“Mom just text me, the banner interrupted my game and killed me.” he huffed, retrieving his phone from the mess of cushions. “She wants to know if you’ve enrolled me in school yet.”

 

Emma stood up, walked across the small floor grabbed her keys and and jacket and slammed the apartment door behind her.

 

As the tiny loft apartment was aware, she was ready for a fight. She’d been yelling and snapping at strangers on the phone all afternoon but that had got her nowhere. As soon as her irritation with them had reached the point of no return the staff at the end of the line would either hang up or revert to the scripts and plastic smiles. Her mother was no good to fight with; at best she would be able to provoke her into a passive aggressive mess at worse she would dissolve into tears. She couldn’t argue with the kid. There was a line and arguing with her child was miles across it.

 

Regina on the other hand was fair game. More than fair game in fact. Regina was a foe worthy of her foil. Regina would bite back.

 

She parked the car and slammed the rusting, yellow door behind her. Before she had even made it half way down the path the door opened to reveal Regina Mills. The older woman stood in her doorway, she still dressed as though she spent her days in the office despite the fact she barely left the house any more.

 

“You want to talk to me. You talk _to me_.” Emma pointed at her, rapidly closing the distance between the two of them. “You _do not_ talk to me through the kid.”

 

Regina simply held up her hand and pulled her BlackBerry from her pants pocket. When Emma was within reach she showed her its call log. Emma stared at her name and saw an embarrassingly large number in brackets after it.

 

“If you deigned to answer my phone calls I wouldn’t have to use our son.”

 

Emma looked down. Her phone was the bedroom floor she hoped it was still in one piece after it had been thrown across the room. “I feel this is a _Miss Swan_ moment.” She looked up, her anger suddenly overwhelmed by shame, and found Regina had stepped aside.

 

“Would you like to come in or would you like to continue arguing with me on my front step?” Emma followed her as she was led through to the living room. She found a glass of cider and a tumbler of scotch with two ice cubes on the coffee table. “Henry text me. Initially to tell me that my text had killed him,” her brow furrowed slightly as she was still clearly trying to understand what that message meant, “and then to warn me that you were on the war path.”

 

Emma fell onto the sofa and picked up the drink clearly meant for her. “This is Gold’s fault.” She felt Regina sit besides her.

 

“That I was not expecting.” Regina followed, sipping from her cider.

 

“That stupid cloaking spell he gave Belle. I have spent the entire day talking to different shipping firms trying to get our stuff from New York.” She turned to the woman besides her. “Do you know how hard it is to get people to ship to a town that doesn’t exist?” She let her head fall onto the back of the couch. “Trying to convince company after company that I’m not trying to send them on a wild goose chase. _What kinda a name for a town is Storybrooke?_ ” the Bronx accent she impersonated caused her to cough slightly. “I have two choices," she continued once she'd composed herself, "drive to New York and pack it all up or simply start again. Again.” she sighed finishing her drink.

 

Packing up her life had never been an issue. Foster home to foster home. City to city. Then of course the ten months in detention. Even when she moved in with Mary Margaret there had only been a handful of boxes. But this time it was different.

 

It wasn’t her items she cared about so much. It was Henry’s.

 

They had had a life there. It didn’t matter to her that the memories were fake. She had baby photos, his first pair of pre-walkers, the stuffed toy she’d bought him when she was reunited with him in Phoenix. It was a tiny grubby little thing. It was purchased from a drug store. It was the first thing she’d got him.

 

He cared though. He wanted his life in Storybrooke. He wanted to be surrounded by family.

 

She just wanted him.

 

Regina got up, took the blonde’s glass and walked over to the drinks unit. “Why don’t you ask your father to borrow that god awful truck of his and you, Henry and I can drive over and sort out your apartment.” Her back was turned to her, so Emma couldn’t read her expression. The offer sounded genuine though. When Regina turned back around she found a smile on Emma’s face for the first time in a long time.

 

“You would do that for me?”

 

“I am very grateful for you choosing to stay here. For allowing me access to Henry.” She paused as she passed the freshened drink. “Besides,” Emma watched as Regina sipped from her drink, “I’m nice now.” The older woman smirked at her.

 

**September**

 

She looked down at her ringing phone and smiled. She hit the space bar on her laptop and paused the programme she was watching. “Whats up kid?” she asked as slipped her feet off her desk and back onto the ground.

 

“ _Not much_.” She could hear him smiling back at her through the phone. “ _You?_ ”

 

“Paperwork. Doughnuts. Coffee. You know, Sheriffy stuff.” She shrugged.

 

“ _Uh huh._ ” Henry drawled out. “ _What you watching on Netflix?_ ”

 

“I’m…” she rolled her eyes knowing that arguing would be pointless. “ _The Office._ How did you know?”

 

“ _I tried to log on but because you’re cheap only one of us can watch at a time._ ” There was a brief pause. _“Now I’m spending half my time at Mom’s you need to upgrade your package.”_

 

“Or you could tell your mother to get her own account.”

 

“ _She still uses a BlackBerry. Netflix is beyond her._ ”

 

Emma looked at the time in the corner of her screen, logged off and shut down her computer. “I suppose I should do some work then, or did you actually want to talk to the woman endured disgusting and painful things to bring you into this world?”

 

“ _Mom wants to know if you want to come over for dinner.”_

 

_“_ Dinner? At the house? With the both of you?”

 

“ _There will be food, china, cutlery… maybe a drink of some sort.”_

 

_“_ Don’t sass me kid, I know that dinner is and what it entails, I’ve just never been invited round before.”

 

“ _Mom thinks we should have dinner to celebrate my first week back at school._ _Besides,_ ” he added after another pause, “w _e ate dinner when we were all in New York. We eat together at Granny’s._ ”

 

“Yeah but-“

 

“ _But?”_ he cut her off.

 

She had nothing.

 

She had nothing and Henry knew it.

 

It wasn’t that she didn’t want to go to Regina’s for dinner. Its just that she had never been asked. And now that she had the idea confused her. She had eaten with Regina plenty of times. Henry was right, they had eaten in New York; but that was a hotchpotch of a meal constructed from what was in the cupboards and of what remained in date. It was a ‘eat the food or we have decide to either throw it out or drive it to Maine’ meal. They had certainly eaten at _Granny’s_. Countless times in fact. But that was always one of them with Henry inviting the other to join them. That was always a ‘chance meeting’ meal.

 

They had never had a 'preordained' meal. They definitely had never a 'family' meal.

 

Her hands were at her temples by the time she realised she hadn’t said anything for quite a while.

 

“What are we having?”

 

“ _Its Friday so some fish of some kind._ ”

 

“Whats it being Friday got to do with fish?”

 

“ _We’re Catholic_.” Henry replied as that would explain everything she needed to understand.

 

“No you’re not.”

 

“ _Mo- Emma,_ ” She closed her eyes as her son swallowed back her title and called her by her name. “ _I think I would know if we’re Catholic or not._ ” 

 

She wasn’t his mom anymore. Regina was his mother. His mother that had raised him for ten years. His mother who had endured sleepless nights of croup, teething and childhood viruses. His mother who had read him bedtime stories and kissed him goodnight. His mother who had packed his lunches and sent him off to school. His mother who had kissed away the injuries, soothed away the nightmares and raised him to be the young man talking to her on the phone now.

 

She was just Emma.

 

The year in New York was just a year and it was based on false memories. The year they’d had together he was twelve. Too old for bedtime stories. Too old for kisses goodnight and to be warned of bed bugs bites. Too old for a mother to coddle. He was twelve. Wanting to forge his steps into his teenage years, wanting to find himself as a young adult.

 

She was just Emma.

 

“What time?” She asked him reluctantly.

 

“ _Mom told me to tell you six so you’re here for 6:30. We won’t eat until seven though.”_

 

“And I’m to bring wine? Bread? Lorelai and Rory?”

 

“The wine will be enough.” She could hear him smiling again. “Red.” He added quickly. “And some Pepsi for me. She won’t deny me soda if you bring it.”

 

“Anything else?”

 

“That should do it.”

 

“Love you, kid.”

 

“Love you too. Oh and Emma,” his end went quiet for a moment, “thank you.”

 

“For what?”

 

“Letting us stay.”

 

The call was ended and the phone thrown on the desk. She looked at her watch and saw that if she locked up now she had time for a shower. She started the slow process of shutting down the old PC and packed away her laptop. Grabbed her jacked from the coat rack, flicked off the lights and shut the door to her office for the weekend.

 

**October**

 

She walked straight in, despite the protests of whichever former princess was behind the secretary’s desk, as she juggled the takeout bags, drinks and the three local papers. She kicked off her sneakers, dropped everything on the coffee table and tucked her legs in underneath herself as she settled on the sofa.

 

“Your mother isn’t here.” Regina thought she heard Emma mutter something, but couldn't piece together the words to make a sentence. “Make yourself at home though.”

 

“That,” Emma grumbled as she pulled out the various containers from the _Granny’s_ brown bag, “is precisely the problem.”

 

“That you’re making yourself at home in the Mayor’s office?” Regina stepped out from behind the desk, out of her heals and knelt besides the coffee table, hurriedly placing napkins under the containers as Emma continued fussing around with the food. “How many of us are having lunch?”

 

“I didn’t know what I wanted.” Emma shrugged as she tore a grilled cheese sandwich in half and dipped it in a portion of chilli fries.

 

“So you ordered everything?” Regina questioned as she dentally picked at the chicken salad she had found amongst all the fried food. “What is the pain that you’re eating?”

 

“I need an apartment-” as Emma gestured towards the stack of papers with her sandwich and spattered chilli across the rest of the food, table and parts of the immaculately white carpet. “That’s now an additional problem.” Regina sighed at the staining chilli and lifted her hand, Emma caught her looking at the new addition of a bird picture on the far wall and then saw her hand drop back to her side. “Okay, now I’m back to just the apartment problem.” She managed half a smile.

 

“Why the sudden urgency?”

 

“Aside from the fact that I’m over 30? And-”

 

“If you dip chilli fry in that frosting you will be left alone to your problem.” Regina scolded as Emma’s fry hovered over a slice of chocolate cake.

 

She looked between the woman on the floor and the cake before acquiescing. She dropped the chilli fry in her mouth, leaving the cake unscathed.

 

“It was different when she was Mary Margaret.”

 

“She’s still Mary Margaret.”

 

“No,” she picked at an onion ring before offering the container to Regina, “she’s my mother now.”

 

“She was always your mother.” Regina waved away the rings. “Its just that now she knows she's your mother.”

 

“And she’s trying to make up for 28 lost years by suffocating me in that tiny loft. Not to mention David and the crying baby. I swear to god,” she pointed the onion ring she was holding back at Regina, “Brother knows exactly when its 3:27 and is watching the clock because it cannot be a coincidence that he has screamed the place down for the past four nights in a row at that specific time.”

 

“Four nights?” Regina placed down her empty container and reached across the mess of Emma’s food for her drink. “Let me get my violin back from Nero and I shall play for you.” Emma moved the drink further out of reach. “What do you want me to do?”

 

“Magic up some real-estate within my price range? Give me a pay rise?”

 

“Your mother is now the mayor. I, however,” she shifted from her position on the floor, “I have three empty bedrooms, two with en-suits.” Regina brushed down her skirt as she stood. “Move in with Henry and I.”

 

Emma didn’t say anything.

 

She simply picked up the newspapers, headed to her shoes and jacket and left Regina with the remains of lunch.

 

**November**

 

He found her lying the wrong way on her bed. Pillows propped against the metal bed frame supporting her back as she tossed a tennis ball against the wall.

 

“Grams asked me to get you stop that.” 

 

“I heard her.” She nodded as the tennis ball went flying again.

 

“I’m meant to be the teenager.” He chided her, intercepting the ball and taking it to his own bed. He mirrored her position but the slope of the ceiling meant that he could only pass the ball between his hands. “Everyone’s happy that we’ve stayed but you.” He eventually whispered out to her.

 

“I’m happy.” Her voice didn’t echo her words.

 

He turned his head and saw her looking back at him. “I may not have inherited your ‘superpower’ but I know when you’re lying to me.”

 

“Don’t put it in air-quotes, kid, its a legitimate superpower.”

 

The air was thick between them despite their plastic smiles.

 

Mary Margaret could be heard downstair issuing instructions to David as they prepared lunch. Do this. Do that. Not like that. Give it here. Just leave me to it. The baby babbling between them.

 

“Why don’t you call me Henry?”

 

She bit back the reply sitting on her tongue. _Why don’t you call me Mom?_

 

The air was choking them now.

 

They’d both sunk down deeper onto their beds trying to reach the last of the oxygen before they suffocated completely.

 

“I didn’t choose Henry for you.” It was barely audible but she knew he’d heard it.

 

“This why you stopped coming to Friday Night Dinners?” He’d made it through the fog and was lying besides her now. All the better whispered confessions.

 

“I came to, like, four. Isn’t that enough?”

 

“You came to six.”

 

“We can’t just play Happy Modern Family.”

 

“I’m not asking you and Mom to get together. Besides,” he nudged her ribs, hoping a smile would clear away the atmosphere, “I’ve seen _Orange Is The New Black_ I know you would have only been ‘gay for the stay.’”

 

She rolled onto her side to face him. “I’m cancelling _Netflix._ ”

 

“You watched it first.” He complaint was almost a whine, betraying the act he’d been playing and showing him for the young age he remained.

 

“I also read the book. Its about prison reform. Not lesbianism.” She rolled back over and started fishing around under the bed.

 

“What you doing now?”

 

“Looking for my Kindle.”

 

“You want me to read the book?”

 

“I was in a minimal security juvenile detention unit for ten months.” She was on the floor and under the bed completely now. He watched as she pulled out odd socks, dirty cups and what appeared to me the remains of a meal he didn’t think they’d had since September. “Eight months of that I was pregnant. The last two I was in no state for a prison romance, fling, experime-”

 

“Mom-” He winced as she hit her head on the metal bed frame.

 

She crawled back out, a dusty Kindle her prize. “You haven’t called me that since…”

 

“Since Mom kissed me at the docks.” He finished sadly. Taking the device from her hand and helping her to her feet. “Its weird, you know?” She nodded back and sat down besides him. “She’s my mom, you’re my mom, but she raised me; but I have all these conflicting memories telling me that you raised me, that you didn’t give me up…”

 

They were choking again.

 

“Cassidy.” Her voice was a whisper again. “I would have called you Cassidy.”

 

“Thats a-” whatever it was was cut off by a knock on the front door.

 

She got off and padded to the edge of the balcony. She found him next to her, his hand resting in the arch of her back. As they watched David cross the small room to receive the visitor, she was uncertain who which one of them was the parent and which was the child.

 

David revealed Regina standing holding a pumpkin pie.

 

“Grams invited her.” Henry sounded nervous as he started rubbing circles on her back.

 

She was uncertain which one of them was the parent and which was the child.

 

“Aren’t they all British?” She questioned him as the three down stairs exchanged Thanksgiving pleasantries. “Why are we doing this?”

 

“For you.” He told her before heading downstairs to greet his mother.

 

She watched as she pulled him into an embrace and kissed the top of his hair. She watched as the boy let her, knowing that he would be too tall to do that to soon. She watched as the boy pulled her in closer knowing that he would be too tall soon too.

 

As Regina held her son to her, her eyes flickered up and met Emma’s upstairs. They nodded their hellos before Emma broke their gaze to joined them in the living room.

 

“I was just asking the k- Henry- why we’re doing this.” The smile she was wearing wasn’t meeting her eyes. She knew they could all see it too. She broke away and pulled her brother out of his highchair, putting a buffer between her and them. “I thought you three were British.”

 

“Why are we British?” Mary Margaret questioned, going back into the kitchen, back to her turkey.

 

“Fortnight. Trousers.” David started laughing to himself. “Courgette.”

 

“You guys are from the past.”

 

“And that makes us British?” Regina smiled finally letting Henry out of her grasp.

 

Emma merely shrugged. “Either way you wouldn’t have had Thanksgiving.”

 

“No,” Mary Margaret nodded, pulling out an array of vegetables (none of which, Emma noted, were carrots) from the small oven, “Easter was the big thing we celebrated. And we had holidays around the harvests.” She continued as David passed her dishes to serve into.

 

“St Valentines was always my favourite.” He smiled kissing her on the cheek.

 

“I’m about to eat.” Regina scolded him as Henry sat her down at the table.

 

“But whatever we are, you are certainly American and so-” she rounded the island, the turkey glistening proudly from its plate, “Thanksgiving.”

 

Emma looked towards her son as she sat down opposite. Before she ducked her head she’d caught him mouth the words ‘For you.’


	2. Winter

**December**

 

She put the cruiser into park before she checked her watch. It was too early still. She leaned over the seat and pulled her laptop bag from the rear, taking some paperwork and a pen out she started on the files from the night shift. In the quiet Maine town she essentially just had to sign and date a blank document, maybe throw in a couple of times and street names of the places she’d driven down.

 

Once complete she threw the files haphazardly back into her laptop back, checked her phone for emails and essentially twiddled her thumbs until she saw Regina pull back the curtains of the front room. The women smiled and waved before Emma stepped out onto the street.

 

The door was open and waiting for her by the time she’d reached the front step.

 

“He’s still asleep, but go up and wake him if you want.” Regina smiled at her as she welcomed her into her home.

 

“Nah,” Emma sent a fleeting glance up the stairs before shrugging off her jacket. “He’s a teenager let him sleep.”

 

“He knows he needs to be up and dressed by nine.”

 

“Killian’s not picking him up until 11.” Emma frowned at the back of Regina’s head as she followed her into the kitchen.She missed Regina’s frown in return.

 

“Sparrow is picking him up?”

 

“Yeah,” Emma slipped onto a bar stool as Regina started the coffee pot, “he’s hired a boat. Sailing. Pirating. Possibly some pillaging.” She shrugged playing with the fruit in front of her.

 

“That all sounds very exhausting for a woman that’s just worked five night shifts.”

 

“I’m not going.”

 

Had Regina been facing her, she would have seen the briefest of smiles. Had Emma been looking up, she would have seen her shoulders relax. Slightly.

 

“You’re not going?”

 

“It all sounds rather exhausting for a me that’s just worked five night shifts.” Emma explained, no sense of regret in her tone. Almost relief. “Besides, its December. Why the hell would I want to float about the Atlantic Ocean in December? Maine is cold enough in the summer.”

 

“So its okay to let our son go sailing on the Atlantic Ocean in December looked after by just a pirate?” Regina slid a cup of coffee across the counter at her, before adding a dash of milk to her own.

 

“David, Mary Margaret and Brother are going too.” She wrinkled her nose as the coffee was brought to her face.

 

“Decaf. You need to sleep at some point.” Regina reminded her, Emma simply shrugged before adding sugar and trying again to sip at the drink in front of her. “Your parents are going?”

 

“Yeah,” she shrugged, “David seems to have taken a real shine to him since we stopped sleeping together.” She was still too busy altering the taste of her coffee to pay attention to Regina’s sputters before her. Decaf never tasted the same, despite advertisers’ claims. “Something about a male friend.” She shrugged again before glancing at the flashing clock on the oven. “Why does the kid have to be downstairs for nine? He's a teenager. Isn’t that part of the rules, teenagers sleep?”

 

“Children don't come with a manual and a set of rules.” Regina rolled her eyes. “He won’t be able to sleep all day as an adult-”

 

“I will be once I’ve seen him.”

 

“Yes but you’ve just come off a night shift.”

 

“As an adult. I am a perfect example of acceptable form of ‘sleep all day as an adult’.”

 

“Our son is too clever to be wasted on law enforcement.”

 

“Ouch.” Emma sucked in her breath through her teeth. “Straight to the inadequacy issues.”

 

“You know what I mean Miss Swan.”

 

Emma suddenly looked up at her and tried to find Regina’s eyes from behind her coffee cup. “That’s two.”

 

“Two?” Regina frowned.

 

“One is when I do something stupid.” Emma was smiling broadly at her, “The second, I have just realised, is when you apologise.”

 

“I don’t apologise.” Regina straightened herself.

 

“No, you call me _Miss Swan_ instead.” Emma found herself smiling. “Those are the two times you still go by formalities with me. The rest of the time you call me-”

 

“Emma.” Regina finished for her softly.

 

The two women busied themselves with their drinks. Emma tapped out a rhythm on the counter with her fingers and Regina started fishing a selection of breakfast things out of the cupboards.

 

“Why does Storybrooke require someone to work a night shift?” Regina asked her after the silence got too much for her.

 

“You tell me. Graham had me working them back when I started so I figure you put them in place.”

 

“To keep you out of my way.”

 

“Oh,” Emma picked at the grapes suddenly before her, “does that mean I can stop?”

 

“Needn’t sound quite so disappointed, dear.” Regina placed down a fresh cup of coffee. “Is spending time at the loft really so terrible?”

 

“No.” Emma murmured. “I’ve just got a routine going.”

 

“My food bills have noticed your routine. You wake up, shower, drive over, spend time with Henry, eat my dinner food, go to work, eat my breakfast food, spend time with Henry, go home and sleep.”

 

“Perfectly healthy.”

 

“Tell that to Dr Hopper.” Regina slapped her hands away from the grapes and placed a bowl in front of her. “Stop working night shifts. Stop avoiding your parents.”

 

Emma resigned herself to Regina’s victory before a wicked smile suddenly crossed her face. “I will stop avoiding my parents when you stop doing Mary Margret’s work for her.”

 

“I- I- I-”

 

“Have suddenly developed a stutter?” Emma’s eyebrow arched triumphantly. “You spend more time in the Mayor’s office than she does. You do more than just her Excel spreadsheets for her. And you let her take the credit. You may be nice now, but currently you’re being a doormat.”

 

“Are you trying to rile me into egregious deeds?”

 

“Just because you’ve stopped trying to kill her, put her in eternal sleep, curse her into a different realm or frame her for murd- Don’t look proud of your achievements, you didn’t succeed in any of them.” Emma scolded. “You don’t have to do the town’s accounts, is my point.”

 

Regina slipped dejectedly into the stool besides her. “I miss being Mayor.” She eventually admitted.

 

“And she hates it. Let her fail, swoop in afterwards, save the day and you’ll be begged to take up office again.”

 

“That’s ingenious.”

 

“What can I say?” Emma threw a grape into the air and caught it in her mouth. “I watch a lot of TV.” Regina pushed the bowl closer to her still. 

 

Emma’s hand brushed against hers as she took it from her. Their hands touched again when cutlery was passed between them. Their hands lingered-

 

“Morning Moms.” Henry yawned, walking over to the juice and leaning between them. “What no pancakes this morning?” He grumbled taking the bowl from before Emma and the cutlery from out of their hands.

 

**January (just)**

 

She didn’t know how long she had been knocking on the door but it felt like forever. Her knuckles were starting to hurt and she found she had to switch hands when she wanted to bang louder on the door to be heard above the fireworks in the distance.

 

She went to connect with the door again but, finding only air, stumbled forward.

 

“What is it Miss Swan?” Regina hissed at her, pulling her robe tighter around her.

 

“Three.” Emma smiled at her. “How did you know it was me?”

 

“Well since the town hasn’t come at me with pitchforks for quite some time-”

 

“I can arrange some if you miss them.” Emma was still smiling, but found she was swaying slightly too now. She steadied herself against one of the pillars.

 

“What is it Miss Swan?”

 

“Put on some clothes and watch the fireworks with us.”

 

“If I wanted to watch the fireworks, I would be.” She retightened her robe and folded her arms across her chest.

 

“Henry wants you there.”

 

“You’re looking after our son drunk?”

 

Emma stood up properly and put a finger in front of the older woman to silence her. “Tipsy.” She corrected. “And he’s with friends. No looking after required.”

 

“And yet he requires my presence?”

 

She put out her hand and offered it to her. “Come watch the fireworks.” Her voice was barely a whisper in the night.

 

**February**

 

She put the ageing Volkswagen into park, disconnected her phone from the tape deck converter and shut off the engine.

 

“Right Brother,” she turned the the small figure enveloped by the car seat besides her, “I’m going to unpack the Bug ready for our sleepover. Try not to do anything magical in my absence.” She went to step out before quickly turning back to him. “Try not to do anything magical at all actually. That’s my thing. Can’t have Me Point Two usurping me any further can we?” she leaned over him and tickled his stomach. “Can we?” she smiled down at him.

 

He looked so like her memories of Henry. 

 

His cheeks tinged with red as teeth tried to make their way through.

 

She remembered sleepless nights. A screaming child. A boy she’d nearly abandoned to Walmart because he simply wouldn't stop crying, even after she’d torn open a packet of rusks fresh from the shelf. A young man that could only find comfort sucking on _her_ thumb. 

 

She rolled her left thumb through her fingers, remembering the feel of his tiny mouth wrapped around it. How it felt. How wrinkled it would look when she removed it from her finally sleeping son. How she’d tried everything to sooth him, but only her thumb, _her left thumb_ , could send him to sleep.

 

“None of that happened though, did it?” She was continuing to smile down at the small boy. A smile so broad it hurt. She wondered if, even at this tender age, he could recognise the falseness of it. Hear the unfounded joviality forced into her voice. She shook her head, and swiped at her eyes. “Wait here.” She told him finally managing to step out onto the road.

 

Mary Margaret had packed her trunk with too many supplies for one night and as she surveyed all goods sowed away she wondered how much she actually had to take into the house. She slung the diaper bag over her shoulder and a carrier of formula and bottles before trying to juggle the sanitiser.

 

She sent a fleeting glance at the boy in the front seat before running to the front step and dumping everything, unceremoniously, onto the ceramic tiles. She ran back, slammed down the front of the Bug and whipped open the passenger door.

 

“Miss me?” she asked him as she started to unfasten the carrier from the seat. “Jesus, you’re getting big.” She sighed as she slipped the handle into the crock of her elbow and locked up. “Let’s go see Regina shall we?” She cooed down to him as she made her way down the garden path. “Lets get really drunk and pretend that we’ve not been kicked out so Mommy and Daddy can have noisy sex! Yeah,” she raised her hand to him, “baby high five!” He lay there motionless. “You’re right, we should work on the bro fist first.” She pressed on the bell and waited for the door to open. “Tell me there’s wine.”

 

“There is always wine.” Regina smiled at her before taking Neal. “There is always wine.” She repeated to him offering him a wider smile and a happier tone. “There has to be wine on this joke of a Hallmark constructed holiday.” 

 

Emma followed her through to the TV room, the assortment of bags and supplies nestled in her arms. Where she dropped everything, again, Regina softly placed Neal on the ground and transferred him from carrier to play pen.

 

“It was Henry’s.” Regina tried to explain away Emma’s quizzical look. However, she’d misinterpreted her expression and stoney silence. “It was in the baseme-”

 

“Thats the one we had.” Her hands were gliding over the wooden slats. “I found it in a thrift store in West Virginia. It was the drive between Phoenix and Boston.” Neither her hands nor eyes ever left the structure before her. “We’d stopped in a motel near Augusta, you know real Katniss country, the place didn’t do breakfast but there was this diner in converted Silver Bullet and it was the drive of this - well-” she shrugged, “thrift store. Just wooden stuff. Tons of it. Stuff you didn’t know could even be made of wood. And outside was this.”

 

She darted round to the far side of the pen, Neal spinning round to watch her, their heads nearly bumping as she bent over the edge and leaned in. 

 

Then she found it; a tiny, scraggly line of blue.

 

The one time Henry had ever drawn on furniture. Her reaction had been enough, even as a toddler, to know that he should never do it again. Her crying. Her panicked - frantic - cleaning. 

 

She looked up at Regina,

 

“This crayon mark?” As she pointed, Neal grabbed both hands around her index finger, she simply removed him and sat him down further away.

 

“I’d left him to-”

 

“Make a cup of coffee.” Emma finished for her. “Did you nearly leave Henry in a grocery store?”

 

“He wouldn’t stop crying.” Emma could hear how hard it had been for her to form the words. How dry her mouth must be. “He was such a miserable baby. Like he hated being a baby. He just wanted to be a grown up. He only cheered up properly when he was able to move around. By the time he was crawling he was transformed. He just wanted to explore the world, to touch everything, to be everywhere, to know everything.”

 

This was the boy that, by ten, was travelling by himself to far off cities, knocking on stranger’s doors and telling them to save the world. This was the boy Emma knew. This was the boy that Emma had helped to raise. This was a real memory.

 

Tears now streaming down her face, Emma swiped them away with panicked - frantic - hands. 

 

“You have wine?”

 

“There is always wine.” Regina nodded, her own eyes visibly wet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for all the Kudos, I really appreciate the faith.
> 
> Circus.

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first OUAT I've written. So please review and let me know what you think.
> 
> Other works of mine can be found at https://www.fanfiction.net/u/932454/circusfreak88
> 
> I also tweet @ergo_Kate


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